How the White Cube’s children killed the pesky, homeless Spectator

O’Doherty begins the second essay in his book with a sardonic plea for art historians to tell their histories in a more memorable and entertaining way, as Aesop’s [Art] Fables. And so allow me to channel our wise example and tell the story of how the new, powerful, popular children of the Great White Cube solved the long-standing problem of the gallery’s wandering specter, the Spectator (by killing him). (Continuation from Part 1)

(Read to the end for O’Doherty’s own hysterical suggested Aesop’s Fables.)

The Great Eviction

According to O’Doherty, the second motivating factor for the appearance of the Great White Cube was the evolution of the Picture Plane “that grew up and got so mean.” (Read Part 1 for thoughts on the first factor.) Until the middle nineteenth century, “Father Perspective and Mother Space” reigned supreme. (Caution: I’m being reductive, but so was he.)

Perspective created realistic, relatable space in each artwork—space for the action/subject of the painting, for the viewer to visually and mentally inhabit. But, specifically, as landscape painting and the Impressionists (et al.) became more popular (late 19th century), art’s inhabitable, illusory space began to disappear. (Actually, O’Doherty sites Courbet’s 1855 show Salon des Refusés as the first show of this new age.)

While landscapes generally made each painting’s Edge or Frame arbitrary (and therefore unimportant), the Impressionists’ paintings created and enforced the idea that color and technique were themselves important. Thus the space of the artwork became less illusory and more literal, it became the membrane (canvass) of the work itself, the Picture Plane. This spatial redux evicted the viewer—formerly so comfy and resolved in perspectival space—into the space of the gallery, outside the Picture Plane. (One imagines the harrowing scenario of the viewer narrowly escaping the collapsing constructs of Perspectivism/Realism, grabbing whatever realistic baggage they had, and reduced to refugee status beyond the homeland borders of the Picture Plane.)

the viewer, circa 1900?

Then a whole bunch of mess happened, brought about by “Pandora’s Picture Plane” (Really, O’Doherty does provide a great story): first the Picture Plane “accidentally” precipitated Collage, a “persistent guttersnipe” constructed of real world objects. Combined with the Picture Plane, these objects divided the world of artworks in two: the “art” object, and art that maintained the Picture Plane (planar images, i.e. photos). Necessarily, the displaced viewer divided into two gallery entities: the Eye, and the Spectator.

The Eye is fascinating, and I’ll probably write about it later. For now, know that it is noble, incorporeal, the ideal vantage point, and remains, for the most part, attached to the Picture Plane and the realm of the 2D. (Even regarding such overwhelming installation work as the Merzbau, the Eye dominates in the form of the Installation Shot—photos thereof.)

The second inhabitant is the Spectator, “also called the Viewer, sometimes called the Observer, occasionally the Perceiver.” In (very) short terms, the Spectator and the gallery space simultaneously come into existence, and then both become problematic, and here’s how: evicted from imaginary perspective space, the Spectator wanders about in real space (aka the gallery) for the ideal place and position for viewing each artwork. Meanwhile Collage is happening, made up of real objects, which generate their own real space (according to O’Doherty). The Spectator is “obliging,” kneeling, bending, twisting his neck, moving around a gallery, in order to best view and understand an artwork.

the wandering spectator

And he wanders forevermore, from gallery to gallery, doing those awkward things we wish we could, through the topography of art objects (outside the realm of the Picture Plane). And he lived happily—and lost—ever after. The End. (NOT.)

The Murderous New Generation of Galleries

As we’ve already seen, Tumblr and Pinterest (&c.) have risen as the new generation of the Great White Cube in the digital age. And while they, in turn, may present a future, Oedipal danger to their own father, they already have blood on their hands—the blood of our dear wandering Spectator. And the case against them is fairly strait forward (and involves Star Wars and Tolkein references, so pay attention):

The Spectator lives in the realm of the real and the 3D—that is, everything that isn’t 2D and under the purview of the Picture Plane. He is connected to the object, and remains inherently connected to it and to motion in real space. (Even if O’Doherty mentions cooperation between the Spectator and the Eye in some po-mo circles, the Spectator’s inherent reality and motion is fundamentally separate from the immaterial Eye.)

the noble, incorporeal, discerning Eye?

But Tumblrs and Pinterest boards have transformed everything into an image (part of their new gen. super powers). Not just art and art objects, but any kind of object, fashion item, textile, piece of architecture, landscape, urban condition, installation. Even, arguably, emotions, experiences, events, and complex memes have been reduced to images (or the grossly reductive internet “meme” that nevertheless makes us smile), and are pinned to Pinterest boards like butterflies on display. All these former things, objects, are reduced to images and herded into the land of the Picture Plane.

It’s almost as if the Eye conspired with the new generation of galleries (like the incorporeal, knowing Eye of Sauron enlisted Saruman) to finally overthrow and reclaim the art/gallery cosmos for itself—no doubt another tragic consequence of “Pandoras Picture Plane.” (Even George Lucas would be impressed of this plot’s scope.)

The trademark of the Spectator—himself co-opted and responsible for much late 20th century art—is his capacity for adapting and his endless wandering from one artwork to another, one gallery to the next. But the jump into the digital age is one that even the limber Spectator might not be able to make. If all objects can be (and have been) transformed into images, then he is no longer needed. And truly, what room is there around our personal smart devices for the Spectator to inhabit? There is only room for our visual field, for us, for our Eye. The new gen. of galleries has even adapted the Picture Plane into a meta-, literalist version of itself via the actual physical dimensions of the computer screen.

So when next you pull up your Tumblr or Pinterest, or your Fab gallery or Google image search, keep an eye out for the faint chalk outline of the Spectator. Or maybe visit an actual museum, which could potentially be renamed Conservancy Parks for the lost and useless Spectator.

j;

—“Couldn’t modernism be taught to children as a series of Aesop’s fables? It would be more memorable than art appreciation. Think of such fables as ‘Who Killed Illusion?’ or ‘How the Edge Revolted Against the Center.’ ‘The Man Who Violated the Canvas’ could follow ‘Where Did the Frame Go?’ It would be easy to draw morals: think of ‘The Vanishing Impasto That Soaked Away—and Then Came Back and Got Fat.’ And how would we tell the story of the little Picture Plane that grew up and got so mean? How it evicted everybody, including Father Perspective and Mother Space, who had raised such nice real children, and left behind only this horrid result of an incestuous affair called Abstraction, who looked down on everybody, including—eventually—its buddies, Metaphor and Ambiguity; and how Abstraction and the Picture Plain, this as thieves, kept booting out a persistent guttersnipe named Collage, who just wouldn’t give up. Fables give you more latitude than art history. I suspect art historians have fantasies about their fields they would like to make stick.” Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: the ideology of the gallery space, chpt II “The Eye and the Spectator.”